FAIR AND LOST

FRANCESCA FINI

During the performance, I’m wearing electrodes on both arms and I try to apply makeup. Involuntary muscle contractions caused by electric shock are very strong, so that I cannot control my hands and the makeup spreads all over my face. We hear the chorus of “Nabucodonosor” by Giuseppe Verdi, which has a very strong symbolic value in the history of my country, bringing up the ghosts of old struggles for freedom that no one remembers anymore. “My country, fair and lost.” The hysterical, uncontrollable movement of the hand represents the disease of social habit, which reveals its fragility when the system appears on the point of collapsing: the deep conflict between a conscious behavior and an external social conditioning. Even crying is involuntary, caused by the black pencil and mascara entering my eyes, since I cannot calibrate the movement of my hand. A mechanical cry that is automatically transmitted to the audience in a sort of empathic conditioned connection, unconscious and therefore completely useless.